


Upright and on Two Legs

by Vitreous_Humor



Category: Good Omens (TV), Plato's Symposium - Fandom
Genre: Crowley needs a hug, Established Relationship, Library sharing, M/M, Mythology References, Relationship Discussions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 08:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: Aziraphale considers (and subsequently discards the idea of) boundaries. Crowley is offended by the written word.





	Upright and on Two Legs

One of the strangest things that happened in the Days That Followed (the Apocalypse That Wasn't? Armageddon't? Aziraphale still wasn't quite committed to any one phraseology yet), was how much time there was. After the first few months when the truce between them, Heaven, and Hell looked like it was going to stick for at least a little while, the days stretched out, and there was nothing to do but... well.

Enjoy one another.

And they did. Frequently. And inventively. And occasionally disastrously, but their average on the whole, Aziraphale felt, was overwhelmingly positive.

Of course, that didn't mean that they could spend every living moment together. They had their own spaces and their own spheres. Just because Aziraphale didn't work for Heaven anymore didn't mean he was going to give up on the performance of small bits of good any more than Crowley was going to give up on his favorite bits of mischief.

Aziraphale told himself that it was good for them to spend time apart. He had read somewhere that time apart meant that they were engaging in a healthy relationship, that they were maintaining proper boundaries and remaining established as individuals. It reminded him, anyway, that the occasional fantasy of keeping Crowley all to himself in variously intricate and binding ways should probably just stay fantasies. Probably. For now.

“I have business to attend to today,” Aziraphale said firmly. “You may stay here if you like, but I'm afraid you can't come with me.”

“And what kind of business is that?” asked Crowley more than a little petulantly.”Thought you were done being Heaven's errand boy.”

“I'm off on my own errands today,” Aziraphale said, refusing to be baited. “And if you think a quarrel will get me to stay...”

“I know it won't,” said Crowley. He sounded so glum that Aziraphale couldn't resist reaching over to tousle his hair.

“I'll be back this evening,” he said, even if there was a tiny voice that wondered if the bookseller from Reading might be put off... No. She was in her late eighties and lived with a lot of rather murderous cats. Best not to chance it.

“I know you will,” Crowley sighed. “Don't mind me. Have a good errand, angel.”

“Thank you.” Aziraphale paused, and then, determinedly casual. “If you do decide to stay, please help yourself. I mean, read anything you like.”

He half expected Crowley to wave him off, tell him he would just nip along back to his own flat or that he'd nap until Aziraphale returned.

Instead the demon's head snapped towards Aziraphale, his sunglasses sliding slightly down his nose to reveal wide eyes.

“Are you joking?”

Aziraphale fussed with the edge of his jacket, trying not to blush.

“No, I mean... books are meant to be read, aren't they?”

“By you,” Crowley said. “The books in this place are meant to be read _by you._ Last time I saw someone reaching for one of your books, they lost a hand.”

“Oh, I put it right back,” Aziraphale said, refusing to feel guilty. He had, very quickly. “He just thought he had brief hallucination. Right as rain after a lie-down.”

Crowley made an amused sound, a look that could only be called soft on his face.

“So you won't do any of that to me? Not going to miracle away bits of me if I reach for the wrong ancient tome?”

“Well, do be careful with the Kyle Murchison Booth Papers, those were very hard to get, and it's likely best not to take the Sneering Bible out of the... no.” Aziraphale gave himself a stern mental shake. “I will certainly not miracle away any bits of you if you touch them. You can read anything you like. Just library rules. Leave them out where I can put them back properly, and clean hands, if you please. And if you could avoid breathing, the reduction in vapor would be ideal. But that's all.”

Aziraphale felt slightly exhausted at the end of it, tired and a little raw as if he had ended up with a slight sunburn after a long day at the beach. He wondered at the odd squirming feeling in his stomach, and he realized it was a kind of vulnerability that was still new to him. How long was he going to keep finding new ways to offer little bits of himself to Crowley? Did he even want to find an end to it?

He looked up when Crowley slipped behind him, arms around his middle, face nuzzling the back of his neck.

“Thank you, angel,” he said, and there was only a puff of awe still in his voice. They would likely talk about it later, but for now, it could simply be what it looked like, an offer to entertain a bored lover being left to his own devices for the day.

“You're welcome,” Aziraphale said, stifling the urge to tell Crowley _gloves please._ Neither of them actually left behind any of the residue that human hands would, but good habits made for good archives. It didn't _do_ to get sloppy.

He enjoyed Crowley's arms around his waist for a little bit longer, and then he shook him off briskly.

“Well, I'll be off. See you this evening.”

He turned around and left then, because if he didn't, he would stay, and stay, and stay.

***

As it turned out, it was a profitable visit to Mrs Cunningham in Reading. She showed him a rather clever book of rhyming prophecies from Flanders and an exceptional pamphlet about the fainting witches of Hume. Aziraphale had been pleased to get those.

Then had come the rather awkward moment when Mrs Cunningham had made some very pointed remarks about not getting any younger and rather hoping that parts of her collection could go to those who would truly appreciate them rather than being left to embarrass and confuse her children, for all that they were _good_ children, but the young were so very conservative sometimes, didn't Mr. Fell know, and perhaps he might care to help her out...

The two slender volumes on incubi were, Aziraphale thought with a slight blush, not something that that _strictly_ belonged in his collection, but well. Perhaps he could make a home for them in some back shelf. He did hold Mrs Cunningham in high esteem, and her eye for good books was unmatched.

It was dark by the time he returned, and at first, he thought Crowley must have gone home after all. There was only a single light left burning in the shop, and as promised, there was a tidy pile of books set on the main reading table. Aziraphale tilted his head to see what Crowley had been reading.

There was some necromantic texts from the 1600s, Plato's _Symposium,_ and a copy of _Thee Fiyne Divvil of Weishaupt,_

 _Oh, if he liked_ The Fiyne Divvil, _I should show him its sister heresy,_ An Angeul Runneth Over...

Aziraphale started to return the books to their proper place, and then his sharp ears picked up a sound from the loft above. It was soft, a rustle of feathers followed by a breath taken too fast.

_Oh, he's still here... Why didn't he come down?_

Aziraphale climbed the spiral staircase up to the loft, where the bedside lamp gave the space (mostly a bed and a single small nightstand) a firelight glow. On the bed was a cone of black feathers, two large wings extended and folded around to shelter someone who sounded utterly miserable underneath them.

“Crowley?”

The wings shivered but didn't part.

“Oh, you're back. I didn't hear you.”

“I can see that. Crowley, whatever's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, that's certainly a lie.”

“I'm a demon, S'what we do. Lying.” That sounded at least a little sulky, which was better by far than that small heartbroken sound his voice had been before

Aziraphale waited.

“You didn't tell me that reading would be like that!”

He blinked.

“Like... what?”

“Like all... getting up inside you. Into your head. Squeezing. Making you feel like you had gotten run over by a camel. _You_ always look so happy when you're doing it!”

“Well, it does feel like that someti- you know, scoot over.”

He folded out his own wings, something like opening a coin purse and letting out a three-master sail, and he arched them as Crowley had, forming a cone over himself as well. He stroked the edges of Crowley's pinions, making them tremble a little, and then with a sigh that said that Crowley was most definitely still irritated, Crowley parted his wings and moved a little closer. Now they were covered with a feather canopy, and Aziraphale held up his hand, summoning up a little candle light to flicker above his palm.

“Don't-” Crowley blurted, and Aziraphale stared.

“Why, my dear, you have been crying.”

Crowley wiped hard at his eyes, and finally sighed.

“Your blessed books,” he hissed half-heartedly.

Aziraphale reached for his hand, and Crowley took it. He looked as if he were only doing it to humor Aziraphale, but there was a tension to how he clung, almost as if reassuring himself that the touch was real, that the _angel_ was real.

“It's a silly story anyway. People never rolled around like balls with two faces in one head and four legs and four arms. It's _silly,_ and it never happened. Not even _our_ mythology.”

It took Aziraphale a moment to catch up.

“Are you talking about _Symposium?”_

“Yeah, the whasits. With the bloke with the frogs. He was talking about how people were... were stuck together at first.”

“Yes. And they were so powerful that the gods became frightened of them. Zeus used his lightning to cut the people of Earth in half straight down the middle, so they looked like they do today, just one face, two arms and two legs...”

“They were _happy,”_ Crowley said, his voice trembling. “They must have been so happy before they got cut in half, don't you think?”

Aziraphale let Crowley squeeze his hands more tightly. Now he could feel an unfamiliar lump in his throat as well.

“I think we were,” he said softly. 

Crowley's shoulders hunched, making the feathery canopy above them shudder a little.

“Come off it, angel,” he said, sounding a little more like himself. “We were never people. And I think I'd remember having been a great rolling ball with you.”

“It does sound quite silly, doesn't it?” Aziraphale said, smiling slightly. “But it sounds happy, as well.”

Crowley shuddered.

“I _like_ being me,” he said, almost to himself. “I like it a lot. I've been being me for almost six thousand years, and I'm feeling as if I'm beginning to get the hang of it. But being me with you... that sounds good too. So good.”

He peered at Aziraphale anxiously, and Aziraphale reached out to cup his face gently with the hand not holding the fire. Crowley's face felt hot to the touch and a little damp.

“I think it sounds very good,” he said quietly. “And I know what came after too. That if Hephaestus came and asked if two halves who had found each other wished to be welded together, so that they could live as one life and then after they were dead live as one dead soul, then they would answer yes.”

“Would you? Answer yes?”

A mere forty years of psychological babble had nothing on a 2000 year old myth, Aziraphale abruptly decided.

“Yes,” he said. “And we'd go rolling out over the fields of the South Downs, and like as not be caught and exhibited in some kind of traveling curiosity show.”

It made Crowley laugh as he had hoped it would, and he smiled to see Crowley's shoulders drop and that tension go out of him.

“Sounds like a good time to me,” Crowley said. “I could rile up the punters while you ate all the popcorn and candy apples.”

“Sounds divine,” Aziraphale lied, because he would last approximately two days before needing something at least a little more refined. More importantly, however, Crowley's wings folded to nothing, and he sprawled backward on the bed, one arm draped over his eyes.

“Ugh, I feel like such an idiot. Imagine letting a book get into me like that.”

“It's what they do, my dear.”

“Give me a good canceled TV show or a cheerful play any day. I appreciate the offer, angel, believe me, I do, but I doubt I'll...”

Crowley paused as Aziraphale pulled out the tracts on incubi out of his bag.

“Well,” he said after a moment. “That's a rather different thing, isn't it?”

“It is. Here, Come here next to me and we can read together.”

And they did read together, and figured out some of the positions in the book and dismissed others, and laughed at the little notations in the margins while their hands stayed clasped and their heads bent towards one another.

Later on, as the sky went darker and then lighter, Crowley fell into a nap, Aziraphale read some of the Flemish prophecies he had acquired, and their fingers were still woven together, themselves with each other and not to be separated.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> *The Kyle Murchison Booth Papers can be found in Sarah Monette's fantastic short story collection _The Bone Key._  
>  *These two are... let's say, not getting any better at boundaries any time soon.  
> *I'm beginning to notice that Crowley cries a LOT in my fic.  
> *If you look up black herons, you can see them doing the exact wing thing I describe here!


End file.
